


Curtain Call

by moonrise31



Series: once, twice, and again until it's over [33]
Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: F/F, ft sahyo because i can
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 06:47:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30034695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonrise31/pseuds/moonrise31
Summary: In which Nayeon and Mina navigate through some big life changes to their world of small-time musical theater, with the help of each other and their seven cast members.
Relationships: Im Nayeon/Myoui Mina
Series: once, twice, and again until it's over [33]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/935700
Comments: 4
Kudos: 87
Collections: Fic/Art Exchange (The Fic/Art Tinder)





	Curtain Call

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Keiyuu's #FicArtExchange on Twitter :D
> 
> Amazing [companion art](https://twitter.com/zilyeon/status/1370949511938371590) created by the talented @zilyeon!!

Chaeyoung steps into the dressing room in her usual way, the door carelessly swinging behind her as she waves a handful of packets in the air. “Hey, everyone.” She beams at the other eight people spread across the couch and various bean bags scattered across the room. “I hope you’re all ready to go out with a bang.”

“‘Go out with a bang’?” Jihyo accepts the script that Chaeyoung tosses at her and quickly leafs through it. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that this season is our last,” Chaeyoung says, as casually as if she had been announcing the kind of coffee she’d had that morning. The script she drops into Nayeon’s hands slips through outstretched fingers. It lands on the carpet with a dull, solid thud.

“What?” Sana is smiling, as usual, but her eyes are unsure. “Are you serious?”

“Very,” says Chaeyoung. “We’d talked about this from the very start, remember? How we never expected to turn big profits at our shows. So as expected, our funding is finally running a little too dry to keep it going after this season. But it’s okay.” She drops a script into Momo’s lap. “You were all getting bored of small-time theater, anyway.”

“Not that bored,” Momo grumbles, glaring at the bound papers in front of her as she sinks further into her bean bag. “I’m not ready to say goodbye to any of you yet.”

Nayeon finally makes a sound, shaking herself out of her disbelief to scoff as she leans over the arm of the couch to poke at Momo’s cheek. “No need to be dramatic. It’s not like we won’t ever see each other again.”

“But it won’t be every day.” Sana’s bottom lip juts out with purpose, and the rest know by now to avoid eye contact in order to resist bending to its pressure. 

“We still have all of this season to get through first,” Mina says from her spot quietly nestled into Nayeon’s side. “So in the meantime, let’s not think about anything else.”

“Mina’s right.” Jeongyeon sticks out a foot to nudge the old piano bench Dahyun is perched on. “You have the music already, then?”

“Of course.” Dahyun brightens, producing a folder from somewhere underneath her jacket and handing it to Jeongyeon. “I gave you some really fun numbers this time.”

Finished with her round of the room, Chaeyoung plops onto the same bean bag as Tzuyu. She hands over a last sheaf of papers, and Tzuyu flips it open to a random page. Her eyes light up. “You left enough margin space.”

Chaeyoung nudges her with an elbow. “I didn’t realize how serious your complaint was until you accidentally shut the lights off at the peak of Jihyo’s monologue last year.”

Tzuyu whines, ducking behind her packet as Chaeyoung laughs and throws an apologetic arm around her shoulders. Nayeon, meanwhile, sets her script down on the couch and raises her eyebrows in their direction. “Why did you make me and Mina the leads again? Not that we wouldn’t be everyone’s favorite absolutely all of the time, but you also have Momo or Sana or Jihyo.”

Momo makes a face. “The lead roles are a couple. And if you think I’m even going to _act_ like I’m in love with Sana, then you need to reevaluate.”

“It can’t be Jihyo, either, since she’s allergic to physical affection,” Sana says cheerfully from her spot in Jihyo’s lap. “On stage,” she adds as an afterthought.

Jihyo rolls her eyes. “The part’s all yours and Mina’s, Nayeon-unnie.”

“And since you two didn’t start dating until after you were both leads in _Love is Timing_ , I will be taking full credit and advantage of that, forever,” Chaeyoung says, and giggles when Nayeon makes a face. 

Mina is still absorbed in reading her own copy, lost enough in it to not realize that she’s starting to think out loud. “This seems a little...”

“Normal,” Jihyo agrees. She frowns at Chaeyoung. “I thought you would rather drink bleach than go mainstream.”

“That’s just a saying, unnie. But imagine.” Chaeyoung holds both of her hands up and spreads them in a physical representation of exactly how grand her vision is. “The irony of our company putting on the most successful production to date, only to close immediately after. It’ll be the talk of the town -- or at least get a blog post in the Entertainment section of the Korea Herald.”

Dahyun lets out a sudden sigh. “So this really is it then, isn’t it?”

Chaeyoung looks up at her, and this time her smile finally wavers. “Yeah, it is.”

Tzuyu dips her chin, her hair falling over her face and brushing against Chaeyoung’s shoulder. On Dahyun’s opposite side, Jeongyeon fidgets in her seat, and Momo remains slouched as she folds and unfolds the top corner of her script’s title page over and over again. Nayeon has propped her elbow on the arm of the couch, chin resting in her palm, and Mina now sits rigidly beside her -- except for the constant run of her thumb along the back of the hand Nayeon has in hers.

Even Sana remains muted. So it’s Jihyo who clears her throat and picks up the grin Chaeyoung had finally allowed to drop. “Then let’s go out with a bang.”

-

The play comes together more quickly than Nayeon would have liked it to. It doesn’t seem fair that rehearsals are already rolling along with so few missed lines, and that Dahyun has written such an impeccable score that every awkward part where Jeongyeon’s percussion rhythms clash with her piano melodies is ironed out within the first few weeks. Chaeyoung barely takes three nights painting the backdrops and another three designing the props, and Tzuyu spends most of her time in the sound and lighting booth playing with her puppies now that her margin notes are markedly clearer.

Sana only trips over a prop crate once, Momo brings three times the snacks as usual to share, and Jihyo has so far managed to avoid arriving in the morning with a sore throat from practicing too much on her own the night before. In the evenings after rehearsal, Nayeon purposely avoids discussing scenes with Mina like she normally does on the bus ride back to their apartment, and the two of them spend the hours after a late dinner on their respective laptops, silently polishing their resumes and searching for auditions. 

The only thing that remains the same is how hard Chaeyoung pushes them towards perfection, but somehow the welcome weariness that settles semi-permanently in Nayeon’s limbs also makes her tired.

“I hate it,” Nayeon says to Jeongyeon a month before their first show. Jihyo and Momo are currently running their lines on stage with Sana on standby, which frees Mina to head for the sound booth to greet Tzuyu’s dogs and Nayeon to the pit to bother her two favorite musicians. 

Jeongyeon twirls a drumstick between her fingers. “Hate what?”

“You know.” Nayeon hums as she attempts to vocalize the jumbled balancing act her brain has yet to settle into. “Isn’t this all working out a little too well?”

“I didn’t think you’d be the one to complain about already having landed a new job before we’ve even finished our old one,” Jeongyeon says. “It looks like you have a bit of a heart after all.” 

Nayeon gasps, bringing an affronted hand to her chest. Jeongyeon’s eyes twinkle as she smirks back, but it has significantly less bite than what has become usual.

Dahyun rests her elbows on the top of her closed piano. “I know what you mean, unnie. But maybe it’s for the best?” She shrugs, and it almost seems like she believes it.

“Maybe,” Nayeon says. She yelps when Jeongyeon’s drumstick taps against her forehead. She brings her hand up in a belated defense, glaring at Jeongyeon while Dahyun fails to hold back a snicker. 

Jeongyeon laughs. “Of course it’s for the best. You’d rather have everyone move on smoothly than remain unemployed for months, right?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Nayeon scoffs, crossing her arms.

“But it’s what you said,” says Dahyun. She quickly slides off the piano bench and stops just out of Nayeon’s immediate reach.

The drumstick hits the back of Nayeon’s head this time, and she rounds on Jeongyeon instead. “Give me that.”

Jeongyeon, of course, does the exact opposite of handing over the offending object, raising it high and away from Nayeon’s searching hands. She almost falls off her stool as Nayeon lunges forward for it, and the two of them are only saved from knocking over the cymbal stand by Dahyun having the foresight to rush over to catch it. 

“Are you kidding me?” Jihyo’s voice echoes throughout the entire space, unaided by Tzuyu’s speaker system. The three of them glance sheepishly up from the orchestra pit. Jihyo huffs, her stern gaze mollified by the way her cheeks puff up and a strand of hair flutters out of her face. “We can hear you from up here, you know.”

“Sorry,” Nayeon sings, elbowing Jeongyeon until she nods vigorously in agreement while Dahyun puts on an appropriately contrite expression. Jihyo rolls her eyes and returns her attention to the scene, and the rest of rehearsal sits a little more comfortably inside Nayeon’s chest.

Mina picks up on it later, though. They’re back at their apartment, dinner warm in their stomachs as they settle onto the living room couch for their nightly audition search. Lately, what this really means is that Nayeon snuggles up to Mina, head resting on her shoulder so she can watch Mina skim through listings and get distracted by Sana’s walls of emojis masquerading as comprehensible messages or the occasional corgi video Momo sends in between.

Nayeon could live like this for the rest of her life, at the very least: a blanket tucked around her waist and the vibrant hum against her ear and cheek from every time Mina giggles, full of affection for cute dogs and the people who have come to mean the world to the both of them.

Then Mina says, “What’s on your mind?” And the jumble in Nayeon’s head at last falls into place.

“I don’t want this to end,” says Nayeon. She turns her face to press into the crook of Mina’s neck. “It’s not supposed to end.”

Mina shifts slightly, probably because Nayeon’s breath has tickled her throat a little too much. But she uses the moment to maneuver her arm around Nayeon and bring her somehow closer. “Nothing’s ending, unnie. You know that.”

Nayeon turns to face forward again, the glare of Mina’s resume on the laptop screen immediately making her eyes shut. “But I don’t know that. None of us know that, not really. We can say it as many times as we want, but how can we be so sure when we don’t even know where everyone will be this time next year?”

“Well, we already know you’ll be busy making it big with your drama,” Mina says quietly, giving Nayeon a squeeze. “Please remember to thank us in all of your award speeches later.”

Nayeon laughs, but she doesn’t mean a single breath of it. “I still can’t believe I already got the part. The audition was barely a week ago.”

Mina pauses instead of replying. She lowers the lid of her laptop and sets it onto the empty cushion on her other side. When Mina shifts again and gently turns Nayeon’s head so they can meet each other’s eyes, Nayeon can’t help but let out a whine at being forced out of her perfectly comfortable moping position. After a moment, Mina says, “You got the part because you deserve it. And you shouldn’t feel guilty for moving on when the rest of us are going to be moving, too.” Mina’s voice softens impossibly further as she smiles. “Just because things are changing doesn’t mean that they’ll be for the worse.”

Nayeon already feels her worries -- inexplicably -- falling away one by one, the pull of Mina’s confidence too strong to not submit. And yet, a particularly stubborn remnant lingers. “How do we know?” 

“We don’t.” Mina shrugs. “But people have built entire religions around beliefs far weaker.”

Nayeon stares, and Mina stares right back. Then the tug at the corners of Nayeon’s mouth becomes too much, and she bursts into laughter. “You know, you’d make the most ridiculous motivational speaker.”

Mina’s answering grin cements the peace that Nayeon’s mind has finally found. “Maybe that’s why I ended up going into theater.”

-

“You don’t have to try to be subtle, Minari,” Sana says, her familiar teasing tone somehow never breaching the threshold of annoyance no matter how much she uses it. “We know you’re staring.”

Mina does pull her gaze away from Nayeon, then, if only to stick her tongue out at Sana. Sana giggles and leans into Jihyo, who is putting up an admirable effort into keeping her expression at just the right amount of exasperation. But before long, Mina finds herself already glancing back at Nayeon, watching as she continues to hit every note of her first act solo.

Mina doesn’t stare because Im Nayeon, the woman who has been keeping Mina’s heart safe for the past three years and counting, occupies the stage as if the entire world is packed into their tiny company theater. Mina stares because the person she sees during scenes does not remind her of Nayeon in the slightest: the small smiles, the sleepy eyes, the foreign way she pulls up a chair and dusts it off before she sits with a straight back and one leg crossed neatly over the other.

Nayeon laughs it off whenever Mina says that she’s her professional role model. But years of rehearsal and countless performances worthy of standing ovations many times over have done almost nothing to contradict the fact that Mina remains starstruck.

“I’m going to miss this,” Sana says suddenly. “Watching scenes backstage with you guys, running lines until we could say them in our sleep.”

“Me too,” says Jihyo, her words barely registering over Chaeyoung discussing a particular gesture with Nayeon, now on the other side of the stage. But when they do, Mina whips around to face the other two. Jihyo, in turn, crosses her arms and pulls away from Sana’s hold. “What? I’m not allowed to have feelings about this?”

“Of course you are.” Sana’s grin widens, and their pocket of backstage space warms into the moment. “So you do love us, after all.”

Jihyo frowns, lips already parting to fire back a steely defense. But then she purses them instead, shoulders dropping with a heavy exhale. “How could I not?” She scoffs as Sana continues to coo at her. “Stop it. You and Momo aren’t even going to stay in the country after this season is finished.”

Sana pauses, and time freezes with her. Still, she tries for a laugh moments later. “We can’t all be prodigies like Mina and land auditions for Korean Broadway. So it’s probably best for us to return to our roots for at least a little while.”

“Probably,” Jihyo agrees without nodding, and absentmindedly reaches out to wrap her arm back around Sana’s waist. Jihyo is okay, they know, but Mina watches Sana’s face fall anyway. And Mina wonders then whether she had been so blinded by the need to make Nayeon smile just a few nights previously that she’d ended up denying the stifling reality already playing out in front of them.

Rehearsal breaks a few hours later. In a rare change of heart, Nayeon volunteers herself and Mina to clean up so everyone else can leave early. Mina goes along without protest, because humoring Nayeon’s more fanciful whims has long become one of her favorite hobbies. And when Nayeon drags her to the edge of the stage so that they can sit and dangle their feet over the edge, Mina knows that Nayeon has bigger plans than sweeping floors and picking up the snack wrappers Dahyun hides in corners of the orchestra pit and promptly forgets about after.

Nayeon begins to swing her legs almost as soon as she settles down, restless even as she leans back on her hands and sighs. Mina watches the tension seep out of her frame with the exhale, and mirrors Nayeon’s posture even though she can already feel her spine protesting. 

“I hope whoever ends up renting this building next treats it well,” says Nayeon. She looks up at the ceiling -- the stage lights are dark, but the rows of lights above illuminate the entire auditorium as if it’s the most average of rooms, and not filled with two hundred seats and the dreams of nine people struggling to remember what they were before they became entangled together in something far greater.

Mina settles for a nod. “We have a lot of nice memories here.”

“Yeah.” Nayeon’s foot kicks up, and she points it at the far corner. “Do you remember when Dahyun stood on those chairs and the seats fell out from under her?”

Mina giggles. “All in the name of determining the optimal acoustic experience.”

“It was worth it in the end, at least.” Nayeon hums. “We put on the haunted house special that year, right?”

Mina tilts her head. “Does it really count as us putting on a show if Momo and Tzuyu both refused to participate?” 

Nayeon rolls her eyes. “They really shouldn’t have watched that terrifying Japanese horror film. Momo refused to go backstage by herself, and Tzuyu wouldn’t turn any of the lights off until Jeongyeon promised her that any ghosts hanging around would definitely go for Sana instead.”

“Jihyo watched it, too.” Nayeon raises her eyebrows at that, and Mina copies her expression. “You didn’t know? She left rehearsals before sunset for almost an entire week.”

Nayeon wrinkles her nose as she tries to remember anything odd about Jihyo’s behavior then. “Didn’t she say she was cat-sitting and had to always feed him at four o’clock?” Mina only blinks back at her, watching as the realization slowly dawns on Nayeon’s face. “I can’t believe it. The great Park Jihyo, our most acclaimed rising star in the Young and Wild theater company, falls for jump scares and things that go bump in the night.”

Mina grabs Nayeon’s hand. “Don’t tell her I told you. She’ll get mad at me.”

“As if.” Nayeon rolls her eyes, fingers slipping easily into the familiar spaces between Mina’s. “She’ll just yell at _me_ twice as loudly.”

Mina laughs, leaning in to rest her head against Nayeon’s shoulder. “I love her, unnie.” Her hand tightens around Nayeon’s. “I love them all so, so much.”

“I know,” says Nayeon. Her cheek bumps against the top of Mina’s head. “I do, too. But we’ll all be okay.”

“Do you think so?” Mina’s voice comes out much smaller than she’d intended, but the gentle strokes of Nayeon’s thumb against hers makes her think that Nayeon would have noticed either way. She takes another breath. “I mean, I know that we’ll be okay with each other, even if Momo and Sana are going back home, or if I end up having to look for jobs outside of Seoul.”

“You’re going to get the part, Mina,” Nayeon says, soft and firm. “But I know what you mean. After we put on our last show, we’re never coming back to this theater again.”

“Yeah.” Mina glances up, letting the auditorium lights soak into her eyes until they start to blur. “We’ll be okay, but I’ll miss them.”

Nayeon straightens, then, and Mina falls a little more into her. “It’s only a two-and-a-half hour flight from Seoul to Tokyo.” Mina hums, already thinking of the last time she’d gone to visit her parents. “A round trip ticket is something like 200,000 won.”

“I know.” Mina shifts her head, looking against the light and past Nayeon’s jaw and nose to catch her eyes. “Of course we can visit.”

“Of course we can visit,” Nayeon agrees. “We’ll be able to hop on a plane any weekend we want, because five hours there and back and 200,000 won each won’t be much. Because I happen to be looking at Seoul’s next Broadway star,” Nayeon ignores Mina’s huff, “and you’re looking at the prettiest face about to grace Korea’s largest television network.”

Mina can’t hold back a laugh as Nayeon carefully flips her hair over her unoccupied shoulder. “Your face is alright, I suppose.” She snickers when Nayeon’s elbow digs into her side, but she doesn’t bother to add any space in between them. 

“We’ll all be alright, you’ll see,” says Nayeon. “Some weird billionaire is finally going to buy every piece of art Chaeyoung’s been making all these years, and Tzuyu’s already looking into applying for some upcoming movie production teams. Jeongyeon and Jihyo are a package deal too great to pass up, and the company unfortunate enough to hire them won’t realize what it’s signed up for until it’s much too late. And I don’t know if you’ve heard Dahyun’s latest compositions, but the next musical she writes is definitely going to go places.”

“You’ve really been keeping tabs on everyone, haven’t you,” Mina says, heart already steadying despite still knowing that her days on this stage, hand-in-hand with Nayeon and everyone else, are numbered.

“Jeongyeon called it me being naggy, but I always knew there was a reason I’m dating you and not her.” Mina’s elbow finds its way into Nayeon’s side this time, but Nayeon only wheezes once before she continues. “And, Momo asked me about apartment subleasing advice just earlier today, so I think her and Sana’s move back home is a lot less permanent than you’re afraid of.”

Mina sits up, almost knocking into Nayeon’s chin. “Really? Sana didn’t say anything about that.”

Nayeon shrugs. “Nothing is for sure, still. But I know that we all have more than enough talent for intent to be as good as any belief.” She nudges Mina’s shoulder with her own. “So if you believe that change can be good, I think that we’ll figure out ways to keep everything almost the same, anyway.”

Mina can’t stop the smile curving her lips even if she’d wanted to. “Maybe it’ll be even better.”

“Maybe it’ll be even better,” says Nayeon. And the auditorium lights are shining so crisply in her eyes that Mina commits every color to memory right then, promising herself that she has a lifetime left to put a name to every single one.

“Do you remember the first photo we took?” Mina asks, her chest gripped with such a sudden desire that it throbs.

Nayeon brightens as she nods. “Of course. After our first show together, you came up and asked for a picture.”

In the face of Nayeon’s grin, Mina is helpless as her smile widens, too. “Right. And do you remember what you did when we took it?”

Nayeon hums as she makes a rather big show of tapping her chin and looking to the ceiling for answers. “Look so absolutely stunning that you had no choice but to fall for me right then and there?”

Mina laughs even as she rolls her eyes. “Yes, you did. But you also leaned in and kissed my cheek right as I hit the button.”

Nayeon’s grin somehow grows larger still, and Mina swears that the lights above make the air around her shimmer like something much too good to be true. “Well, I had to do something so that maybe you’d want another picture, later.”

Mina takes out her phone, then. “Is now a good time?”

Mina can see the teasing twinkle in Nayeon’s eyes, but Nayeon in turn must see the longing behind Mina’s -- how she so desperately wants for something to remain the same, indefinitely.

So Nayeon shifts even closer and looks into the camera Mina has half-raised in front of them. “Any time is a good time.” And Nayeon knows Mina, so she’s already leaning in for the cheek kiss when Mina centers them on screen. But Mina also knows Nayeon, so she turns her face just as the camera clicks. 

They kiss for a while, sweet and unhurried -- savoring the moments in which they are just two people in a room at once too small and too large for them. And if they keep their eyes closed, then maybe they won’t ever have to leave.

-

Their last performance shakes the entire building with its thunderous standing ovation.

Surprisingly, Jeongyeon doesn’t cry when Tzuyu appears on stage during the applause, presenting Chaeyoung with a bouquet of flowers large enough to drown her in petals. But Mina catches Momo quickly wiping away a tear in an effort to hide losing the bet they’d collectively made. Sana’s the one who gleefully calls Momo out backstage after the show, and Momo whines before admitting that the pizza and chicken deliveries are already on their way.

Their dressing room is far from an ideal place to squeeze in nine people and copious amounts of alcohol, but their after parties have never been the most comfortable in terms of personal space. Sana finds a permanent spot for the night in Jihyo’s lap, and it only takes Jeongyeon half a bottle of soju to start throwing pieces of pepperoni into Sana’s waiting mouth from the other end of the couch -- ignoring every indignant yell Jihyo lets out whenever the edible missile hits her in the eye instead. 

The lights are bright, the room is stuffed, and Mina’s cheeks and ears are beginning to redden. Nayeon is a little bit of a sleepy drunk, which means she starts to move around less in her bean bag in favor of pressing her face solidly into the crook of Mina’s already flushed neck.

“Hey, Mitang.” It takes Mina a few seconds to register that the finger poking at her is Momo’s. Nayeon grunts as she turns, attempting to blink the bleariness from her eyes. Momo looks surprisingly sober. Nayeon squints at her, more than ready to reach for more alcohol to force down her throat, but then Momo says, “Could you two come with me for a minute? It’s Chaeyoung.”

Her words sink in. Then Nayeon half-rolls, half-stumbles off of Mina and onto her feet. Mina manages to get up a little more smoothly, and the two of them follow Momo out of the dressing room. Dahyun shoots them a glance as they pass, but Momo waves her off. She nods once before going back to a particularly spirited game of Jenga, which Jihyo is trying to play from under Sana and Jeongyeon has been approaching from her position of having one cheek perpetually pressed against the table.

The alarm for the fire exit for the second floor of the building no longer works; while a safety hazard, it also allows the three of them to quietly push open the door to the fire escape, where Chaeyoung and Tzuyu are already standing.

Chaeyoung, elbows resting on the railing in front of her, glances back as they step out. “You don’t need to bring the entire crew up here. I’m fine.”

“We keep telling you that it’s okay to not be fine,” says Tzuyu. “But if you won’t listen to us, maybe you’ll listen to someone else.”

“That’s right.” The cool post-midnight air has sobered Nayeon enough for her to coordinate crossing her arms in front of her chest, even if she’s not entirely sure of the situation she’d just walked into. “I’ve been told by multiple sources that I’m extremely convincing.”

Chaeyoung sighs, turning away from them and slouching further against the thin metal rail. “It’s not a big deal.”

“No, it’s a big deal.” Momo’s eyes are round moons, and Mina thinks that there is something about the night sky that coaxes forth even the heaviest of secrets. “None of us want this to end, you know.”

Tzuyu is quick to nod along. “Just because it was inevitable doesn’t mean that we can’t be sad about it.” She nudges the toe of Chaeyoung’s shoe with hers. “I know it’s impossible, but if I could find a place that would take us all --”

Nayeon chooses that moment to gasp. “Even me?”

“Even you,” Tzuyu deadpans. But then she smiles, and the moonlight leaves just enough of it in shadow to dilute its good humor. No one can think to say anything else, so Tzuyu shifts her foot to prod at their director again. “Chaeyoung?”

Chaeyoung huffs, hunching further as she stares at the glittering stars visible past the blackened city outlined above them. “I know I’m the one who said it had to end. I’m the one who told myself not to get so attached to a project with an expiration date.”

“I think you must have also told yourself back then not to be sad about it,” says Momo. “But I think even back then, you already knew better.”

Chaeyoung keeps her gaze on the sky for a few more moments before she finally ducks her head, laughing as she wipes her sleeve across her eyes. “Sorry, Momo-unnie. I’m going to have to split the food costs with you, after all.”

“Me, too,” Tzuyu mumbles, just before she wraps Chaeyoung in a hug that Momo quickly also falls into. 

Nayeon inhales, glancing up at the moon as she waits for the cool air in her lungs to somehow banish the moisture gathering beneath her eyelids. Beside her, Mina sniffs quietly as she begins to shake. Then Tzuyu straightens, eyes wide and teary even as she gives them a curious look. “You two are the couple, so why are you the ones third wheeling?”

Nayeon chokes out a laugh before she rushes forward, Momo’s hand already reaching out to pull her in. “It’s not okay right now,” Mina whispers into the air beside her, partly muffled by her face being pressed into Chaeyoung’s hair. And hearing the truth they’d been avoiding for all of this time at last clears the thickened air that had refused to dissipate when they’d first tumbled out onto the fire escape. 

Mina takes another breath. When she says, “But we’ll be okay, later,” Nayeon knows that this is true, too.

When the five of them file back into the dressing room, Jihyo immediately jerks up from where she’d dozed off on the couch. The jostling alerts Sana to their arrival, and Jeongyeon and Dahyun look up from the half-packed box of Jenga blocks. Silence falls.

Chaeyoung takes a deep breath. “Great job this season, everyone,” she manages before her voice cracks. She clears her throat once, twice. Then she gives up trying to steady herself, and smiles as she says, “I’ll see all of you later.”

Nayeon hasn’t been tipsy for a while now, but somehow the next hour still passes her by, incoherently. They’ve all helped tidy the dressing room, Chaeyoung mentioning something about getting the cleaning crew later in the morning to pick up in the auditorium. And Nayeon knows that her own inner monologue is being a little dramatic, because they still have to return another time to pick up all of their belongings and clear everything out for the next leaser.

And yet, there is something final about how they all gather outside the front entrance, now. Gazes meet and smiles are exchanged, each of them looking around as if to memorize faces that will be cast in a hundred new lights before they have time to dwell on everything that was before tonight. 

Momo and Sana take their leave first, followed by Jeongyeon and Jihyo offering to share a cab with Dahyun. Chaeyoung and Tzuyu depart last, both accepting hugs and even Nayeon’s affectionate hair ruffles before they also head home.

“Well,” says Nayeon, facing the empty pre-dawn street running in front of the theater company. “Should we get going?”

Mina nods, already taking out her phone. “Just one last picture?”

“Sure,” Nayeon says with a shrug. “It’s kind of dark, though. Do you think it’ll come out well?” Mina doesn’t answer, too busy staring at the email notification on her lock screen. Nayeon peers over her shoulder.

“I got it,” Mina whispers. “I got the part.”

Nayeon is already pulling her close, hugging her fiercely as she murmurs into Mina’s hair. “I knew you could do it. I knew you could.”

Mina laughs -- and maybe cries a little, too. She turns, reaching up to curl the lapel of Nayeon’s jacket into her fist and bury herself against Nayeon’s sure and ever-present heartbeat.

“See? What did I tell you,” Nayeon says as she runs a hand up and down Mina’s back. “When things change, sometimes they can be for the better.”

“That’s what I told you,” Mina tries to scoff, but the relief in her voice is what warms the both of them and pushes the last bits of weight from their shoulders. 

“You did,” says Nayeon, chuckling before allowing Mina’s hand on her cheek to guide them into a kiss. And by some miracle, the city remains quiet for a moment more, leaving them to watch the sky above underscore the new day in the softest pastels.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm usually floating around on twitter @moonrise31


End file.
